Slaine: Lord of Misrule

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Slaine: Lord of Misrule (volume 6) (Rebellion, 2011).

Admittedly, this chunk of Pat Mills' venerable Slaine has aged much better than I remembered, but this is still not a book that I can really recommend very loudly. We're at the point in the saga that somebody once described as "Doctor Who with an axe," in which the Celtic barbarian has been traveling upward in time to major historical events. This seems to have been done to allow Mills the chance to totally geek out on researching the incidents that inspired myths and legends from Britain's history. This time out, Slaine's taken the mantle of Robin Goodfellow, with his ladylove Niamh reincarnated as Maid Marian, a nun. Over the course of the two linked stories "The Name of the Sword" and "Lord of Misrule," Slaine needs to get her out of the convent, remind her of "the laughter in the woods," get back to nature and join with the locals in killing the hell out of a lot of boring and straightlaced Christians.

I have a bias against this period in the first place, because Mills was, in the 1990s, going through a pretty repetitive anti-Christian funk, with everything feeling pretty one-note. There are no memorable villains, or, really, any other characters of note. It's Slaine by-the-numbers. He kills a lot, and doesn't think it too many, and it never really matters during this phase who his enemies are.

It is certainly drawn extremely well, but in Rebellion's new collection of these stories, there has been a stunning revision to the original artwork. "Lord of Misrule" was drawn in traditional pen-and-ink by Clint Langley, then a reasonably new name to the comic. He'd previously painted some Judge Dredd episodes and worked with Mills on the deeply odd serial Dinosty, and he explains in an introduction that he found the assignment much more difficult than anticipated, and was never happy with the colorist's finish to his inks. (As an aside, it was a blown deadline for "Lord of Misrule" that led to then-editor David Bishop, in his superhuman guise of Tharg the Mighty, quickly commissioning a short extension to the new series Sinister Dexter; the added exposure led to the series' surprising popularity and probably set the seeds for its 300+ episode run.)

Given the chance to return to his artwork, Langley has recolored quite a few images. I'm of two minds about this, actually. I can appreciate the opportunity to make corrections to comics as they originally appeared when it is something that really needs a modification - the revised lettering of several "handwritten" captions in a Defoe story when it made it to book form was a great idea, as the originals were practically illegible - but here, I just don't like the results at all. Langley's computer-composite fumetti work, as employed on more recent Slaine adventures and on other Mills comics such as The ABC Warriors and American Reaper is, at least, always interesting, and, particularly on ABC, really thrilling. But I found the new coloring of "Misrule" completely intrusive and it never flatters the original work at all. At its worst, the revised pages just look like somebody slapped some lens flares on the page, and at best, it still fails to complement the original.

It's a good effort, and I appreciate all of the design team's hard work, and I also appreciate Langley making the attempt to rework his art to his own satisfaction, even if it didn't work for me. Sadly, the original material is, while better than I recalled and not really deserving of complete dismissal, still pretty mediocre. Everybody involved has done much better work. Recommended for completists only.

2000 AD's Free Comic Book Day Prog

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of 2000 AD's Free Comic Book Day Prog (Rebellion, 2011).



Here's a book that, if I may say so, is long overdue. Every year for about the last decade, the principal comic book distribution company, Diamond, has sponsored this event where retailers order a bunch of comics to be given out freely to customers. The idea is that the comic shops will promote a big event at their store and guests will arrive to reacquaint themselves with how great it was to read funnybooks, and established customers will pick up a couple of new titles. 2000 AD, despite being the most consistently entertaining and rewarding comic book published over the last three decades, has never joined the party until this year. At last, there's a free 2000 AD comic to promote in the US. Free Comic Book Day has come and gone, but it's possible - in fact, it's almost likely, considering the leftover stock that I see in some stores - that there may be a copy or two floating around for new readers to try.

2000 AD is an anthology book, and this issue gives people a reasonably good idea what to expect from any given issue, with a quibble or two. Judge Dredd, as always, is the star of things, and the rest of any given issue is taken up with a mixture of recurring series, serials and short one-off stories. Here, Dredd is ably represented by a short story written by his creator John Wagner and illustrated by Val Semeiks and Cliff Robinson. It's a good introduction, letting people know that Dredd lives in a world where life is violent and technology is downright weird.

The principal backups are Slaine by Pat Mills and Clint Langley, Kingdom by Dan Abnett and Richard Elson, and Shakara by Robbie Morrison and Henry Flint. Kingdom and Shakara are each very recent and popular series - Shakara actually reached its bug-eyed, mad, memorable conclusion earlier this year - and they are each represented by their initial installments. Kingdom is the lyrically paced (if that makes sense) story of a dog soldier called Gene the Hackman, who, with his pack, is defending Antarctica from huge insectoid aliens. Shakara tricks readers into thinking that it's the story of the very last human, an astronaut who was in space when bizarre aliens destroyed Earth, but then it swerves, magically, and shows off that it is not about that at all. Both are completely terrific, and collected editions of each are already available in England. American editions, distributed by Simon & Schuster, will be arriving in a few months' time.

The Slaine story is a pleasant surprise. Slaine has actually been running since 1983 with a dozen different artists illustrating Pat Mills' scripts. The episode here is the first in a series of adventures called "The Books of Invasions" that was painted / photomanipulated by Clint Langley. Langley's tenure on the strip is available in three hardback editions, with a fourth scheduled for later in the year, but I don't believe that these are planned for separate American release (and, presumably, promotion) at this time.

The comic is bookended by a couple of short one-offs, a Tharg story from 1977 illustrated by Kevin O'Neill that introduces readers to the concept of this comic having an alien editor who programs robots to write and draw the features, and a one-page Zombo short by Al Ewing and Henry Flint which is just violent and ridiculous and wonderful. Frankly, 2000 AD should run silly little single pages like this more frequently.

As an introduction, I think this does a pretty good job, although I might quibble that it emphasizes the over-the-top, hyperviolent side of 2000 AD perhaps a little more than I might like. This led at least one store in Atlanta to restrict the freebie to adults only. (I protested that all Earthlet children should be exposed to thrillpower at the earliest possible age.) While 2000 AD, it must be said, isn't for everybody - and a regularly-scheduled, stereotype-avoiding, female-led series is long overdue and would help there - many of its best series are nowhere as dementedly gruesome as the offerings suggested here, and I'm not sure that this really gives readers a feel for how broad the scope of 2000 AD is.

Another eight pages could have introduced readers to the classical pirate adventure of The Red Seas or the weird Victorian crime drama of Stickleback or the Western-in-Hell Ichabod Azrael or the brand new cops vs. demons Absalom, all of which are certainly violent, but not quite as visceral and outlandish as what's on offer here, and I think that might have been a bit more of a balance. Well, now we know for next year! Certainly recommended.

Slaine: Demon Killer

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Slaine: Demon Killer (Rebellion, 2010)



With their fifth volume in the collected adventures of Slaine, Rebellion has entered the long-running strip's somewhat questionable period. There's usually something worth looking at in the series, and happily, "Demon Killer" and its assorted stories have aged much better than I remember them. It helps that Pat Mills' scripts were tackled by some tremendously good artists, but this is still the period where the rot began, and it's hard to approach them without knowing that subsequent episodes would be notably poorer.

The previous four volumes saw Slaine as a wandering hero, returning to his tribe in time to become its leader, and unite all of the Celtic tribes as their High King in opposition to an army of demons and beasts. The fourth book, "The Horned God," could well have been an excellent finale, but Mills found many more stories to tell and Slaine returned after about two years' break.

In "Demon Killer," a storyline painted by Glenn Fabry (42 pages) and by Dermot Power (54), Slaine reaches the end of his seven-year reign as High King and is ceremonially put to death, only to have the Earth's goddess Danu resurrect him for a mission in her land's future, defending Britain from Roman invaders. The story's peppered with very memorable moments, most stunningly its bleak tone towards the end when Slaine realizes he has underestimated the sort of atrocities that Romans would be willing to exact upon the native Britons.

The artwork is gorgeous, and the story in which Slaine and his wife Niamh are forced to find some compromise in their squabbling marriage by being tied to a tree is really funny. Best of all is a terrific scene in which Slaine first arrives in Roman-occupied Britain and is racking up a body count within sixty seconds.

All in all, it's quite a good package of twenty episodes, plus some pin-ups and a very neat bonus: a David Lloyd-illustrated role-playing game strip from the pages of Diceman. Sadly, the reprint of this game is missing a page, making it a little difficult to play, but I think of it as just a bonus and not essential. That's a good way to think of the book, really. It's good, but not outstanding, and the series' new time-traveling format really robbed Slaine of its charm. Recommended for completists, only.

Slaine Vol. 3

Speaking of reprints, in other news, I finally tracked down a copy of the third Slaine collection a few months ago. This, The King, was one that Diamond never saw fit to deliver to my local comic shop, along with Mega-City Undercover, which was released the same week. Fortunately, I found a copy at The Great Escape in Nashville in November. This is a really spectacular shop, worth driving a hundred miles out of your way to visit. The book reprints close to forty episodes which originally saw print between 1985 and 1988.

Much as Pat Mills has a story to tell, the star of the book is Glenn Fabry, who illustrated about half the episodes. When these episodes originally ran, it felt like there was one delay after another pushing back new Slaine stories. Fabry drew just a handful of the pages in the "Tomb of Terror" storyline, a 15-part diversion from Mills' ongoing goal of reuniting the warrior with his tribe. The bulk of "Tomb" was illustrated by David Pugh, and was accompanied by a pencil-and-dice role-playing supplement with each new episode. The RPG pages, with artwork by Garry Leach, are included as a bonus feature in the back, making this one of the cutest little extras that Rebellion has presented.

After "Tomb," there was a break of about nine months before Mike Collins and Mark Farmer took on art chores for a seven week, Zodiac-related serial. Then Fabry got the reins for the twelve-part "Slaine the King," which originally ran in two chunks over five months. Ever behind on his deadlines, and probably deep in debt with his local Dick Blick for all the ink he was using, Fabry's amazing work was worth the wait at the time and just looks better on these pages. The definitive Slaine artist is probably McMahon to me, but Fabry's a very close second.

It was originally thought that Fabry would be illustrating the classic "Horned God," to appear in the standard black-and-white with a color centerspread, shortly after the completion of the Judge Dredd epic "Oz" wrapped up in 1988. As 2000 AD changed paper size and increased its color pages, it was eventually decided that Simon Bisley would paint the epic instead. A little more than a year after the conclusion of "Slaine the King," four last black and white Fabry episodes appeared as a teaser strip and a three-part miniseries. These served as a taster prelude for the forthcoming "Horned God."

Around the same time, Mills and Fabry collaborated on a color newspaper strip called Scatha which was truncated by The News on Sunday's imminent failure. You can read more about that and see some sample episodes over at Bear Alley. Fabry also contributed a color pin-up of Slaine's enemy Megrim as a taster for his unproduced color epic which ran on the back cover of prog 524. It might have been frustrating twenty years ago waiting for each new storyline to get going, but it really resulted in some great comics. Even if you don't like the character of Slaine, this book is certainly recommended for Fabry's glorious artwork. Hopefully Diamond will treat your store better than mine and get you a copy quickly!

(Excerpted from Thrillpowered Thursday, February 05, 2009.)

I Yam What I Yam and I Didn't Think it Too Many

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. This time, reviews, of sorts, of Slaine: The Horned God (Rebellion, 2008) and Popeye: Well, Blow Me Down (Fantagraphics, 2007).



The Slaine epic "The Horned God" was one of the biggest events in British comic publishing in the late '80s. Originally serialized in three chunks across eighteen months, the series by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley was repackaged into three albums and republished throughout Europe and America, turning Bisley into a star and making fully-painted art all the rage in Britain. So how does the story, in which the wandering warrior-turned-tribal king seeks to unite all the tribes of ancient Ireland to war against invading sea demons and the nightmarish army of the Lord Weird Slough Feg, hold up?

Surprisingly well. Contrary to its popularity, "The Horned God" is certainly not the greatest of Slaine stories, but the novel use of the dwarf Ukko's long-after-the-fact narration allows Mills to retell events from the earlier stories from a new perspective, and what you get in this volume feels less like the fourth book in a longer series than a solid, satisfying read in its own right. Bisley's inventive, perhaps mercurial use of different styles throughout the saga gives it a sense of really huge scale, that what you're reading is an epic greater than something from a twenty year-old comic. I think that there are certainly better Slaine stories, and its impossible to separate "The Horned God" from all the heavily-musculatured painted posing that would bury Bisley's talent in time, never mind impact the look of British comics for at least the next seven years, but it's very solid in its own right, and should be judged very positively on its own merits.

There have been several editions of the story over the years, but Rebellion's new edition knocks them all out of the water. They have been really setting the bar with their 2000 AD books, but this one might be the best one yet. The cover and paper stock are as good as ever, but Pat Mills contributed a remarkable set of annotations to close out this volume, and they had me looking over pages to see things I'd never noticed before. Simply great stuff, and something you really need to order right away.



Hold the phone. You're going to want this as well.

Popeye is another series where I'm well behind the current editions - this is about a year old and the third book is due out soon, but as I'm not gettin' comp copies from anybody, you just have to take 'em as you get 'em. This second edition of Segar's old newspaper strip features Thimble Theatre stories from the early 1930s, and is about equally split with about 90 pages of dailies and 80 pages of Sundays. The dailies tell one amazingly fun continuity where Popeye and Olive go west to manage a ranch deep in criminal badlands, and get drafted to stratergerize a war between two dingbat kingdoms somewhere in the Mediterranean or someplace. The Sundays tell a separate continuity on the homefront where, when he's not being set up for another completely ridiculous prize fight, Popeye's wooing his lady love and eating at the greasiest greasy spoon you've ever seen, and arguing politicks with the owner while the friendless layabout Mr. Wimpy tries to get hamburgers on credit.

It is completely addictive, totally silly, and some of the most emphatically laugh-out-loud material I've sat down to read in ages. I knew this going in; the first volume completely knocked out that considerable stack of skepticism I'd built up over the years, thinking the comic was anything like the mediocre cartoon series. I wish it was not worth wasting space restating in the future, but I fear it'll take a while for the word to get out: don't judge these comics based on all the immunity you'd built up over the years to those godawful King Features cartoons stacked up on your UHF channel afternoons in the late 70s when you were waiting for something good to come on.

The print Popeye was a totally different beast, full of bizarre wordplay, plot twists, spectacular sight gags, and the fantastic lead character, swaggering without compromise as he socks and bludgeons his way through an unbelievable enemies' list. Two-fisted violence never looks quite so hilarious as when Popeye lays somebody out among the swee'peas, and the panels of Wimpy standing on a lunch counter shouting "HEY!" while Popeye and Roughneck scream at each other how Congress never helps either sailors or restauranteurs make me chuckle just thinking about them. Actually, the best thing in the book might be a surprising, yet simple, Sunday strip in which Wimpy pilfers sixty cents from the cash register. Jesus, this is a good book. Does the third volume ship this week?

(Originally posted October 27, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)